Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask what your weekly or monthly groceries cost?

287 replies

judemom · 21/04/2020 18:36

I'm wondering if I'm spending more than necessary during the lockdown.

Anyone care to share what your grocery bills are weekly during the lockdown?

OP posts:
judemom · 22/04/2020 18:52

We also eat a lot of fruits such as raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, occasionally kiwi, apples, pineapple, or whatever looks fresh and in season

My DD doesn't like bread much, or rice, she says it's very dry and boring.

I have to make her a lot of roasted vegetables and fruit smoothies, or she nibbles on raspberries and blueberries and apples etc

We of course do buy bread and rice and pasta occasionally, to make paella with very expensive seafood medley. So the dinner is still quite expensive with a starch base.

Maybe I should make Beans on toast for dinner tonight?!

OP posts:
Dontrainonmyparade · 22/04/2020 19:12

I daren’t add it all up.

£100 ish pw supermarket
£19.50 pw fruit & veg box
Too much on boxes of multiple bottles of wine from online retailers. Bulk bought meat early on from online butchers so approx £200 meat to last a couple months.

bluerad · 22/04/2020 19:29

Banginchoons Aldi joined the school voucher scheme yesterday so they should accept your vouchers now.

SheldonSaysSo1 · 22/04/2020 19:51

A fortune at the moment! Probably about £100 a week for two of us but then we are shopping online only at the moment. Also, there are some treats which we would normally buy ad hoc and I'm making sure I keep on top of the store cupboard more than usual.

Thesaltandthesea · 22/04/2020 19:57

DP and I both transfer £250 a month each onto a joint Revolut card for all groceries/takeaways/meals out. Both of us, 2DC and a dog. Normally we have a little left over but definitely not right now.

HOWEVER. DC usually get breakfast/dinner at childminders and lunch at school/nursery. Any coffees/lunches out at work we pay for ourselves. So in reality I'm not sure if we are spending much more on food.

Notonmyshift · 22/04/2020 20:10

I've not been near Tesco for 6 weeks .
I've been using Lidl as it's my nearest supermarket. I've been speaking £130 per fortnight their and £40 in pets at home per month on the cat.
I think it's actually saving me money

90bisodol · 22/04/2020 20:27

Before all this, we were spending about £100 a week for 2 adults, 2 teenagers and a cat. I would usually shop at a few different shops eg. Iceland for frozen stuff, Home and Bargain for household items, Aldi for basics. Since the current situation started, and 20 year old son moved back from uni, it's been more like £150 solely in either Asda or Tesco, as they're the only places that are likely to have everything I need in one place. So the combination of an extra mouth to feed, being home 24/7 so more snacking, and having to restrict my shopping to one supermarket, has led to a 50% increase in my bill!!

EmotionalFlood · 22/04/2020 20:31

We budget £200 a month/£50 a week essentially on food (excluding pet food) for 2 adults. This month I've spent £198 so we're on track... usually I shop in several places though, bulk buy in Costco, top ups in Asda, Lidl or another supermarket... now I only shop in Morrison's because of the early NHS hour so I think we'll end up spending more if this continues... it helps we meal plan, it's costing us more in fruit, milk and coffee as DP is working from home Hmm

Notnew · 22/04/2020 20:32

We are spending about 200-230 euro per week usually it would be around 150-170 for a family of four but as others have said all of our meals are at home where as usually some of them would be out. Plus i suppose we are baking more with the children for homeschool Grin of course

IWantT0BreakFree · 22/04/2020 20:36

We spend about £130-140 per week for 2 adults and 2 small children. But we do buy organic meat, dairy, fruit and veg so that is a bit more expensive. I've been getting deliveries from local farms, as well as our usual milkman. We've spent more or less the same on groceries as we did pre-lockdown.

Purpleorange1 · 22/04/2020 20:49

On average £70/week for 2 adults 2 teenagers who have hollow legs,8 yr old and a cat. We're all home so that includes all meals and snacks. I shop for toiletries and household cleaning stuff once a month spend an extra £25-30 that week. We do spend £20 on takeaways once a week as well.
We don't drink or smoke and we haven't been having any meat during lockdown (I prefer meat from the butcher's rather than the supermarkets) so we saved a few ££s there.

rottiemum88 · 22/04/2020 20:52

Roughly £80/week for two adults and a toddler, although we also have a HelloFresh delivery once a week which is an extra £40

nanbread · 22/04/2020 21:04

@strivingtosucceed we have two adults and two young children in our household, we all eat absolutely LOADS Blush - even my four year old puts away more than the average adult woman I know.

nanbread · 22/04/2020 21:05

(partly why I buy so much veg, to try to fill us all up on healthier / lower calorie stuff)

dayslikethese1 · 23/04/2020 02:41

I've just been trying to work it out; dont think I've changed my habits since lockdown though alcohol consumption has been a bit higher than normal Blush Think it's about £50-60 a week but it's only me, DP and the cat. We shop in Lidl. We also get a veg box every wk. If the OP is wondering how to spend little, we eat a lot of big pan meals, so curries, soups, chilli etc. which always last more than one meal. I buy bags of frozen fish from Iceland if we want fish. Dont eat meat really. I eat a lot of beans and cous cous Grin Don't buy a lot of fruit either; just a bag of apples or oranges every wk so we can have one a day with lunch. I wouldn't say we're depriving ourselves particularly but I can see how you could spend more.

BarbaraofSeville · 23/04/2020 08:22

OP, what is it that you're trying to achieve? Of course your grocery bill will be far more than average if everything you're buying is the most expensive version possible.

Most people are spending more money on grocery shopping at the moment as they're eating just about everything at home and there's restricted choice and fewer or no special offers. In many cases this will be offset in some way by lower spending elsewhere as no bought lunches or coffees, or eating out, although not in all cases as there are quite a few people who get fed at work for free, which I didn't realise, but have seen mentioned on here a few times.

But you may have heard of the programme Eat Well for Less. That would always start with stating how much the family spent on food and how it compared with the national average, according to the Office of National Statistics, not from the results of asking a few Mumsnetters with higher than average budgets who think that it's normal to shop in Waitrose or use Ocado and buy whatever you want without looking at any of the prices. So the average for the whole country for a family with one DC would be about £80-90. Which is an average, ie some spend that, but some spend less and some spend more.

Unfortunately some people have to spend less because they need to try and get enough to eat on a small budget. Other people will spend less on food to free up money for other things they'd prefer to buy.

They'll be buying lots of the cheaper vegetables - normal broccoli, not organic sprouting broccoli for example so far far cheaper. Eg on Waitrose.com, the cheapest normal loose broccoli is £1.75 per kilo, the most expensive is £11.75 per kilo for Duchy tenderstem, but they're both broccoli, just that one is nearly SEVEN TIMES the cost of the other. Do this for all your items and it's not hard to see why your bill is so high.

You mention fish, and I remember reading on here years ago someone who mentioned that a fish pie cost £28 to make, because they bought all the fish from the Waitrose fresh fish counter, yet if I make a fish pie, I'll use basic frozen white fish from somewhere like Aldi or Iceland, again, much much cheaper. I also look out for bargains and freeze them, our Co-op recently closed prior to refurbishment and I got a kilo of frozen tiger prawns for under a fiver, instead of the normal price of nearly £20.

I keep squid in the freezer, from when Lidl has Greek week and it is sold quite cheaply. So if I make a fish paella, it contains my reduced prawns and frozen fish and squid and I might throw in one of those boil in the bag in garlic butter sauce packs, so a big pan of paella would be quite a cheap meal that tastes pretty much the same as the one made with seafood costing 4/5/6 times the price from the Waitrose fish counter or artisan fishmonger.

You say your DH expects large portions of organic meat and other very expensive things, but complains about the cost of the grocery bill. Well obviously you shouldn't have to spell it out to him, but maybe you should.

Or you could sit down and meal plan together with costings and make sure he realises that he is a big part of the problem and if he wants the grocery bill to be less he has to give up some of the more expensive options. And it doesn't follow that more expensive = more healthy/nutritious, ie I don't believe for a second that broccoli that costs seven times more than the cheapest version is seven times better for you.

If you can afford to spend a lot on food, it's totally fine to do so, but what's not fine is to spend all that money if you can't afford it, especially when it's not evenly distributed throughout the family and, for example, you're eating beans on toast, to free up money for him to have a lot of organic meat. If he insists on lots of expensive options, he should pay for some of them out of his own personal spending money.

OmgThereAreNoPlanesAboveMeNow · 23/04/2020 09:17

The thing is that high welfare local meat will always be more expensive than supermarket option. So will be the eggs from an actual free range chickens on local farm. So will be the vegetables if they haven't been regularly sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. If I had the money, I know what I would rather buy. I try where I can.

Hagisonthehill · 23/04/2020 09:31

I think some of my higher cost is due to doing only one big shop.I used to do several.A main shop,fresh veg etc midweek from the green grocers and an Aldi shop on the way home from work.
I may reconsider Aldi but don't know if I have the gall to use my NHS pass to walk to the front of the queue.

DameXanaduBramble · 23/04/2020 09:37

Approx £150-180 a week, two adults.

BarbaraofSeville · 23/04/2020 09:44

If your 'way home from work' is in the early evening Hagis there might not be a queue.

I've been to two supermarkets in the last couple of weeks, I went to Aldi at about 3 pm, there was no queue although there was a small one when I came out and bizarrely there was a massive queue at the Tesco I passed about half a mile away on the way home.

I also went to an Asda a couple of days ago at about 5 pm and there was no queue at all, although there were a lot of people inside not bothering to even try and stay 2 metres apart from other people probably explained by most of the customers seeming to be men being guided by their wives over the phone as to exactly what to buy, where to find it etc Hmm

Hagisonthehill · 23/04/2020 10:02

I leave work at 8pm or 8am,a slow drive past might be in order.Tescos is empty at 9pm with lots of shelf filling going on.I get eggs when I get petrol.
If this is going on then I need to cut costs a bit.

Nsky · 23/04/2020 12:50

My hsbits have not really changed, I try to be careful, tho often get flowers and choc, so that adds up.
As ohers have said do what you can

caringcarer · 23/04/2020 13:01

We used to eat out 3 times a week 1 lunch and 2 dinners due to child's activities. 2 adult sons living at home used to buy own lunch 3 or 4 times each week. Shopping costs have soared during pandemic. Used to spend about £170 for 4 adults and 1 teen. Now I am spending £230-£250 each week. I am only female in house and my boys are always eating. We are needing more wine during lockdown.

Thedogshow · 23/04/2020 13:02

About 175. Includes nappies and baby food. Spending a lot more because normally two of the kids normally have school lunches. Also because I’m keeping everything stocked up so we don’t run out mid week to reduce number of trips.
And I’m drinking more wine.

judemom · 23/04/2020 16:14

@BarbaraofSeville

What am I trying to achieve?

I reckon it's to give me some idea of how much families spend on groceries during lockdown.

Also, to assess if I'm overspending , even though we can afford to. Like I stated below- it's always good to reassess your spending habit isn't it.

OP posts:
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.

Swipe left for the next trending thread